CANCELLED: WDR Sinfonieorchester / Widman / Măcelaru

Jörg Widmann is one of the most dazzling double talents of our time. The Munich native has made it to the top of the international league both as a virtuoso clarinettist and as a productive composer. He is constantly on stage, and still finds time to write one work after another – e.g. in 2017 for the  Elbphilharmonie’s inaugural festival. He can be heard in both capacities at the festival »Elbphilharmonie Visions«, together with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, which has appointed him its Artist in Residence for three seasons, and its new director of music Christian Măcelaru.

Aribert Reimann composed his clarinet concerto »Cantus« especially for Widmann and the WDR Orchestra in 2006. György Kurtág’s 1996 piece »Stele«, originally commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, serves as an overture here.

The audience can look forward to a complex and gloriously colourful frenzy of sound in Widmann’s own »Babylon Suite«, assembled from his opera of the same name setting a libretto by Peter Sloterdijk, which was premiered with great success in Munich in 2012. The opera uses the Biblical story of the confusion of tongues surrounding the building of the Tower of Babel as a parable for today’s globalisation.